


Lead to This

by DestielsDestiny



Series: How Magnus Bane Found a Family [3]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alec Lightwood & Jace Wayland Friendship, Alec Lightwood-centric, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Magnus Bane, Bad Parent Maryse Lightwood, Based on promos?, Blood and Gore, Families of Choice, Gen, Hurt Alec, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jace Wayland Feels, M/M, Magic, POV Alec, Parabatai, Parabatai Feels, Protective Alec Lightwood, Protective Magnus, Season/Series 02, Serious Injuries, Sweet Magnus, spoilers?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 15:50:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8898034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DestielsDestiny/pseuds/DestielsDestiny
Summary: Alec isn't sure when I won't risk your life tipped over into I would do anything for you.





	

There was no skin left on Jace’s back. That wasn’t a figure of speech, an exaggeration, a pretty twist of words to soften a blow or soothe a hurt. That was literal.

There was literally no skin left on his brother’s back. A soft whimper escaped Jace’s lips and Alec felt his own skin tighten in response.

Correction. There was no healthy skin left. There was plenty of congealed red and pink and green and grey stuff that Alec supposed must have once been skin, somewhere under the river silt, oil, demon slime, sweater scraps and residual whip fibers clinging stubbornly to ever cruel furrow of flayed muscle like the wielder intended to be remembered, long after the punishment had been completed.

Jace mewled quietly, heartbreakingly, and Alec feels a frison of fear shoot down his spine as he realizes Magnus’ hands are shaking ever so slightly, the faintest tremor causing the ethereal dance of light and dust splaying from his open fingers into Jace’s wounds, the only thing keeping his Parabatai from slipping away entirely, to shiver and shake and waver. Jace flinched abruptly, Alec’s hold on his elbows, the closest part of his body to his ruined back that could remotely be called anything close to uninjured, slipping and sliding.

Magnus’ voice is whipcord hard. “Keep him still Alec.” His tone isn’t the least bit raised, his concentration does not waver, but Alec hears the tension, the fear, the fury curled at the end of that cut off Alexander. Magnus never misses an opportunity to use his full name when he’s stressed, somehow knowing instinctively that the name evokes a strange sense of calm in his boyfriend, a reminder of a time when life was something approaching simple.

They hadn’t expected it to work, not either of them. Oh, Magnus had tried to be as confident and flamboyant as he could, desperately trying for reassuring and sure in the face of Alec’s desperate despair. Alec had just been ready to try anything. And they had been at the anything stage, his mother’s oddly sincere rejection of all ties to anything remotely Morgenstern related, even the golden slip of a boy she had somewhat reluctantly given shelter to a decade earlier, when he was nothing but bruises and too large eyes. Alec sometimes wonders if he is the only one who can see that that never really changed.

It wasn’t that Maryse’s declaration had surprised Alec, far from it. And there was even a small part of him, a part he hated with a passion, a weak part, a part belonging to a hurting boy, that was glad to finally know that his mother’s love was a conditional for Jace as it was for him and Isabelle.

It was more than Alec had hoped for more. He had been desperate before, desperate as Jocelyn denounced the son she had left behind as an abomination as barely more than a toddler as evil, denounced the teenager she had never met as a lost cause who should be feared. Had stood with a clenched jaw as Luke followed her lead into a veil of indifference, even as he held Valentine Morgenstern’s daughter in a protective embrace, protecting her from the world.

He had paced as Robert followed his wife’s lead, remained stone cold and rigid as the Clave declared Jace a traitor, had gasped desperately at Izzy’s wanning faith, closed his ears to Max’s questions. Had snapped at Clary’s loud cries. Had thrown words at Lydia in the face of what he perceived indifference.

Because it wasn’t that Maryse’s words had surprised him. It was just that he had hoped for more for the amazing, golden ray of light, snark, and laughter that was his little brother. It was just that as he walked away from his mother, words ringing in his ears, he’s closer than blood, I’m going to go tell my sister that she still has a future, Alec I mean it!, I don’t want to be alive if we’re on different sides Alec, he finally accepted that everyone around them wasn’t going to wake up suddenly and realize how much danger Jace was in, realize how much his brother(their son, her son, her brother, his step-son, their adopted son, their friend, their partner, their fellow shadowhunter, one of them, one of us) needed them.

It was the realization that this was apparently as down to Alec as it always looked to be.

Which had led them here, Magnus’ ridiculously autentatious and ridiculously comfy couch on a rainy evening, two months after Jace was dragged out of their lives. Convincing Magnus to do this had been surprisingly easy, considering they started the conversation out with angry declarations of whose life they were unwilling to risk.

Alec isn’t sure what he said to tip the scales, what part of his desperate pleas had flipped Magnus from won’t risk your life to the do anything side of the equation, but whatever it was, it lead them there, to a couch, clasped hands, Magnus’ free had hovering over Alec’s hip, parabatai rune exposed and pulsing, Alec shaking with sweat and pain, a fever starting to break out on his brow.

Alec is nearly unconscious when it starts working, when the portal begins to form. It started small at first, a barely glowing circle of purple heat and dark blue light. Alec was barely able to open his eyes over the shivering, what little vision he could pry from them fixed firmly on the opening window, hope thrumming through his heart, so he didn’t notice when things started to go wrong.

Magnus will later tell him, tell them really although Jace is barely awake enough to take anything in, but in the hours and days and weeks that will follow this, Magnus will veer so far away form callous teasing and flippant disinterest towards compassionate soothing and protective shielding that Jace will joke that he woke up with an extra parabatai, albeit one with really terrible taste in hair. Magnus will simply smirk and offer Jace more tea, while Alec attempts to choke another cookie past the lump in this throat. Magnus will later tell them that what happened next wasn’t the plan at all. Will later tell them that there was a plan at all.

Alec doesn’t remember enough to remember if this should be news to him. All he remembers is Magnus suddenly moving, suddenly releasing Alec’s hand to literally throw his arms wide, the portal shimmering into solidity in response. He remembers the sound of something shattering, something tinkling, someone screaming. Magnus will later tell them that he blew out all the lights in the room, and all the power in four city blocks to widen the portal, to turn what should have been a tracking spell, at most a glimpse of a look, into something tangible, something you could reach through, something you could touch. Something that could help, that could save.

Alec doesn’t remember anything the noise, doesn’t remember Magnus crashing into the coffee table dramatically with his arms full of wet, ragged sweater and wetter, more ragged shadowhunter. Doesn’t remember Jace scrambling away form the warlock with an oddly jerky gait and surprising speed, doesn’t remember the sound of his brother’s ugly sobs filling the apartment as sodden wet arms wrap around his sweating body.

Doesn’t remember Magnus slamming the portal shut, the beginnings of the usual dynamic slipping from his lips, the slightly stinging “Careful with my boyfriend there Blondie” lashing through the air in the same moment a careless sweep of the hand replaces all the lamp shards into their proper positions.

He remembers the flinch though, a full body jump that nearly knocks Alec off the couch, Jace too weak and too wet to compensate for Alec’s dead weight suddenly pressing onto his shoulders. On to what’s left of his shoulders.

He comes back to awareness in time to see Magnus’ expression shift, in time to see the way he looks at Jace change. It never quite changes back.

Touching Jace’s skin turns out to be a rather effective cure for whatever is wrong with Alec, snapping him from a warm sweat to a cold one even as Jace’s eyes roll back in his head, as Magnus’ knees hit the floor beside the couch, the two of them catching Jace’s slick form in an awkward three way embrace of sorts, Magnus’ hands being the ones that make contact his his sweater covered back, the ones that come away thick with something red and sticky and wet, the ones that make Alec’s stomach roll and Jace’s face wet with tears.

Alec has never seen his brother cry. Not like that.

Somehow, it all leads them here, Jace spread out on his stomach on Magnus’ bed, the warlock’s jaw locked tightly as he attempts to heal the damaged they just exacerbated by peeling Jace’s sweater off inch by excruciating inch, Alec’s quietly desperate suggestion of why didn’t he just magick it off being met with a terse “because I don’t want him to bleed to death.” It leads them to Magnus’ teeth grinding together, his glamours falling, his eyes alive with energy and fury, catlike and unnaturally green in the faint glow of the repaired lamps. Leads to Jace slipping in and out of unconsciousness, ever whimper and soft cry a stab in Alec’s heart. Leads to Alec’s quiet desperation, silent tears coursing steadily, leads to him brushing a had quietly through Jace’s too long hair.

Leads to him whispering. “I’m going to kill Valentine.” Leads to Magnus somehow finding the strength left to chuckle dryly, to look up with his beautiful cat-like irises slitted narrowly and remark. “You and me both darling.”

Leads to Alec finally remembering what tipped the scales from won’t risk your life to anything, as he watches his boyfriend heal his parabatai. Leads him to remember shouting, “I’m all he had Magnus, the only one he has!”

Leads him to remember that moment Magnus’ glamour broke, his true eyes flickering for just a moment, his face a mask of sympathy, understanding, and pure, unadulterated rage.

Leads him to remember the moment he finally realized the truly was in love with Magnus Bane, High Warlock of Brooklyn.

Leads them to the moment Magnus looked at Alec with the eyes of his demon father, and said, “You’re not the only one Alexander. Not the only one.”

Leads them to this moment, poised on the edge of a war. This moment they all stopped being separate things, being choices Alec had to decide between, and became the thing he always wanted.

Leads them to a family.


End file.
